By day the clouds marshal their shadows on
it, and when night comes the heavens sow it with stars, until it flows
like a dissolving belt of sky through the fragrant darkness.
Sometimes, as I have come this way after nightfall, I have heard its
call across the invisible fields, and in the sound I have heard I know
not what of deep and joyous mystery; the long-past and the far-off
future whispering together, under cover of the night, of those things
which the stars remember from their youth, and to which they look
forward in some remote cycle of their Shining.
Past old and well-worked farms, into which the toil and thrift of
generations have gone, the old road leads me, and brings my thoughts
back from elemental forces and primeval ages to these later centuries
in which human life has overlaid these hills and vales with rich
memories. Wherever man goes Nature makes room for him, as if prepared
for his coming, and ready to put her mighty shoulder to the wheel of
his prosperity. The old fences, often decayed and fallen, are not
spurned; the movement of universal life does not flow past them and
leave them to rot in their ugliness; year by year time stains them into
harmony with the rocks, and every summer a wave out of the great sea of
life flings itself over them, and leaves behind some slight and seemly
garniture of moss and vine.
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